Ars points out that this week’s edition of Science addresses how computer technology is changing the education system. There’s likely nothing too surprising if this is something you follow, but it’s always a good idea to follow the press.
Does your University own what you discover (or learn)?
I’m no patent expert, but a not so recent article in the Times (recently highlighted on Slashdot) addresses how “colleges and universities own the ideas and technologies invented by the people who work for them, including professors and graduate students who are paid to do research.” This is a great revenue generator for cash-strapped institutions, but things get complicated when the inventor needs to obtain a license for their own idea, as happened to the student interviewed for the article.
Schools are by definition a place of learning, which is a process of self discovery. What does it mean for a school to own something that comes out of your head while you’re working or attending there? It’s true that these discoveries happen with the aid of school resources, but others might argue that the product of all of a school’s resources is learning (or at least maybe it should be).
Educational technologists have recently worried about student’s owning the copyight to their assignments (which now often appear online)–this is an interesting twist on a similar problem.
I’ll admit that my thoughts on this feel half-baked at the moment.
A bit more on Three Strikes
Along the same lines as my last post, Ars gets into the costs of the RIAA’s proposed “3 strikes” policy. My favorite part:
Jerry Scroggin is the owner of Bayou Internet and Communications(BIC),
a small ISP based in Monroe, Louisiana with around 11,000 small
business, residential, and municipal customers. BIC already receives
notifications from the RIAA each month, and each time”I ask for their
billing address,” Scroggin told CNET. “Usually, I never hear back.”
Techdirt also mentions something that crossed my mind, but didn’t make it into the blog post–taking the fight out of the courts allows the recording industry to sidestep due process. It may make less of a “public statement,” but privately settling these disputes might ensure an outcome that’s more agreeable and perhaps (from their perspective) better than they might have won under the law.
The cost of Three Strikes
Big news… the RIAA announced that they will no longer persue lawsuits against individual music filesharers. Instead, filesharers will receive a notification from the Internet Service Provider (ISP), and may loose net access after 3 “strikes.” ISPs should be cautious, for this could set a bad precedent.
The safe harbor provision of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act was granted to ISPs because it allowed them to effectively turn a blind eye to the vast amount of content flowing over their network. If a copyright holder sends them a notice of something infringing, they take the offending content down. The theory is that ISPs shouldn’t be put in a position of policing content because it would be a huge burden. I would argue that this will require a great investment of man/lawyer hours (though a PK blogger argues that this would take care of ISP’s “bandwidth hog” problem and others may argue that people are a more sustainable investment than hardware). Further, if ISPs are seen as colluding with the recording industry, it might tarnish their image.
A better answer would be a unified “ISP ethic,” perhaps like librarians, to gain public trust. The 3 strike rule might make them into an RIAA-style bad guy, and the costs of such a plan may mean they won’t be able to cut prices or increase service.